House Judiciary Committee to Justice: Explain snooping on AP, please

posted at 2:01 pm on May 23, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Get ready for more televised committee hearings. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a list of pointed questions to Deputy Attorney General James Cole this morning as the committee starts to probe the seizure of phone records from the Associated Press in a leak investigation. The committee also wants to know how Cole got put in charge of the snooping in the first place:

Some of the questions focused on Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to recuse himself from the investigation of the AP phone records, as well as whether Cole was the one to personally sign off on the subpoenas to the AP.

Justice seized the records as part of an investigation into national security leaks. Holder testified last week that he was questioned as part of the probe, which is why he recused himself. Cole has taken the DOJ lead on the case in Holder’s absence.

No one knew of the recusal until last week, when Eric Holder revealed it in House testimony. Holder managed to accomplish the recusal verbally despite regulations requiring written notice, and this is a key point. The kind of warrant executed on media records by Cole and the DoJ in this instance requires approval from the Attorney General alone by statute. Holder argued that his recusal made Cole an acting AG for the purposes of this investigation, but that change of authority should have been recorded and noted.

The same statute requires Justice to at least try to work with a media organization before seeking a narrowly-focused warrant. Goodlatte notes that Cole didn’t adhere to either condition:

Goodlatte pressed Cole on why Justice didn’t attempt to negotiate with the AP for access to the phone records after the news agency had agreed to hold off on publishing a story because of the government’s national security concerns.

“This indicates a willingness on the part of the AP to work with the Justice Department on issues affecting national security,” wrote Goodlatte. “Given this, why did the department not seek the AP’s assistance with its request or provide notice to the AP prior to issuing the subpoena?”

Remarkably, only the Republicans on Judiciary signed the letter. That’s all that is necessary to seek subpoenas if it comes down to that, but it’s an indication that Democrats might dig in to defend Holder and Cole even at the risk of attacking the Associated Press and the rest of the media by extension. At the very least, it makes it clear that Democrats don’t put a high priority on protecting a free press — or as the New York Times put it yesterday, demonstrate “insufficient concern about a free press.”

Also remarkably, the letter apparently makes no mention of the snooping on Fox News’ James Rosen, in which the DoJ bypassed the applicable statute by representing Rosen as a co-conspirator in espionage to a federal court. That will be even less defensible than what occurred with the AP, so perhaps Goodlatte sees some value in pursuing it as a separate case, or perhaps a similar letter will go out in the next few days addressed to Holder himself for answers. Goodlatte gave Cole a deadline of eight days to respond to this letter, and it will be interesting to read the response — or see if Goodlatte gets one at all.

The “Bus” strategy Obama uses to such great effect requires willing victims, and Cole apparently decided Eric Holder is worth sacrificing himself for. Why would anyone think that Holder, whose personal career highlight previous to now was buying a pardon for America’s greatest tax cheat and Iran trading scum Marc Rich, is worth going under a bus for?

Remarkably, only the Republicans on Judiciary signed the letter. That’s all that is necessary to seek subpoenas if it comes down to that, but it’s an indication that Democrats might dig in to defend Holder and Cole even at the risk of attacking the Associated Press and the rest of the media by extension.

Please Dems, make this into a partisan battle where you end up defending corrupt officials. That’ll be a winning strategy going into the 2014 elections.

I guess that with these DOJ as well as all of the IRS individuals, I’d like to see them subject to a mandatory examination *by* the IRS and DOJ for, oh, about 10 years, the period during which they are required to research and provide documents about any and all things that come to the mind of the appointed examiners (maybe some Tea Party Patriot folks would volunteer), including but not limited to their historical school records, back to kindergarten, names and addresses of anyone they ever dated or ever thought of dating, content and names of mental participants in any sexual fantasies – real or imaginary – they’ve ever had, copies of every book report they’ve ever written, including rough drafts, complete inventories of every home they’ve ever lived in, including apartments, as if taken at the end of each calendar year – nah, better make that each calendar quarter, just to be sure, hard copy of every email they’ve ever sent or received, with personal backgrounds on every party to those emails, including who they’ve ever voted for, ever talked to, ever had lunch with or made eye contact with, etc…

… under penalty of immediate imprisonment should they dare to utter a syllable of objection to the political proctological exam they’re receiving. F*ck every damn one of them. And no retirement benefits, no pension, nothing. Not another damn dime of taxpayer money for these petty mother*cking tyrants.

On top of that is the political influence of government employee unions.

The build-up of leftists over the years has saturated the bureaucracy.

petefrt on May 23, 2013 at 2:24 PM

Always harder for the party handicapped by (1) media hyperbole when attempting to dismiss even incompetent officials OR political appointees; (2) respect for the Civil Service statutes requiring “cause” for a dismissal + principled reluctance to manufacture fake causes for political reasons; (3) over-reliance on the personal integrity of the employees to not violate laws or nonpartisanship standards.

There is no hope of cleaning the unions; they would have to be statutorily dismantled, and the time may not be quite ripe for that.

Diluting the Leftist saturation would take generations, and Conservatives apparently don’t opt for that kind of career in large enough numbers.

The only possible solution is public exposure and intense prosecution.
And unremitting vigilance, because there will be other occurrences.
And complete refusal by the Republicans to do the same sort of thing.
We shall see if any of these occurs.

Did anyone else notice that the State Department spokesman did not answer the question as to whether Hillary Clinton knew about the Rosen search warrant? He danced away with a classic “I am answering another question while i pretend to answer the one you actually asked.”